Do you want to know what it's like to hang out with MS-13, El Salvador,

or how the Russian mafia fought battles all over Brooklyn in the 1990s?

What about that time I got lost in the Burmese jungle hunting the world's biggest meth lab?

I'm Sean Williams.

And I'm Danny Gold.

And we're the host of the Underworld podcast.

We're journalists that have traveled all over, reporting on dangerous people and places. And every week will be bringing you a new story about organized crime from all over the world.

Available wherever you get your podcasts. Support for Scratch and Win comes from M. Steiner and Sons,

celebrating the anniversary of Steinway and Sons throughout March with special offers on new Steinway and Steinway designed Boston and Essex

pianos. Learn more at M. Steiner.com. When we did our last series about the Big Dig, after it was done,

I found myself having a lot of conversations, some very casual, some out in public, but often about how that

whole story spoke to our current moment, what it says about now. With our new series, Scratch

and Win, I very much wanted to have those conversations, but this time share them with you.

We've got three coming up, each on a different theme from the show.

So one of the arguments I've been making is that lotteries are part of a long trend towards more and more legal gambling.

Bingo helped open the door for lotteries, just as lotteries helped open the door for casinos.

And by that logic, sports betting is just the latest addition to that trend.

But to me, it feels like something else.

In 2018, the Supreme Court effectively legalized sports betting when they overruled a decade's old law blocking it.

The effect has been dramatic, to say the least, and in many ways concerning.

To put a couple numbers on it, in states that have legalized sports betting, bankruptcies have increased by 28%.

In households that have gotten into sports betting, investing has dropped by 14%.

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